Metallica’s X account was hacked to promote fake Solana token

The official X account of the heavy metal band Metallica was hacked. Attackers used a device with the METAL ticker. solana He used this access to promote his token. Metallica’s group has since regained control of the account and removed all posts about the invalid token.

False partnership theses and rapid decline

The illegal posts, which began on June 26, claimed to be collaborating with Ticketmaster to launch the METAL token. In fact, the coin was launched on Solana-based token distributor pump.fun. Ticketmaster did not respond to requests for comment or announce such a collaboration.

The posts also falsely claimed affiliation with MoonPay, a fintech company. MoonPay President Keith Grossman at X “MoonPay does not support METAL” He quickly denied the claim. Referring to Metallica’s famous album and cut, MoonPay then offers consumers “If someone is offering you METAL tokens, they are not the masters of puppets, they are the masters of fraud!”he warned.

Promotional scams and market impact

Subsequent posts from the stolen account attempted to lure consumers with promises of “free concert tickets,” special gaming systems, and special items such as clothing. One thread of posts even highlighted token staking incentives.

According to Dexscreener statistics, the total value of the METAL token instantly peaked at $3.37 million, approximately 20 minutes after its launch. However, the value of the token dropped almost completely to $ 90,000 in less than three hours.

Security breach and responses

It is still unknown how Metallica’s account was hacked. Neither the cluster nor the administration cluster could comment.

This news was first published on the Coin Engineer website.